"I have no illusions about myself at all, old chap. I know my limitations."
"Well, would you mind telling me why you are a bit of a nut?" I asked.
"It isn"t usual for a country dominie to wear a wing collar, a bow tie, and shot-silk socks."
"That"s easy," he said quickly. "I think that teachers haven"t the social standing they ought to have, and I dress well to uphold the dignity of the profession. Don"t you believe me?" he demanded as I smiled.
"Quite! I believe you"re quite honest in your belief, but it"s wrong you know. There must be a much more personal reason than that."
"Rot!" he said. "Anyway, what is the reason?"
"I don"t know, Mac; it would take months of research to discover it. I can"t explain your psychology, but I"ll tell you something about my own. These swagger corduroys I"m wearing . . . when I bought them someone asked me why I chose corduroy, and I at once answered: "Economy! They"ll last ten years!" But that wasn"t the real reason, I bought them because I wanted to have folk stare at me. I"ve got an inferiority complex, that is an inner feeling of inferiority. To compensate for it I go and order a suit that will make people look at me; in short, that I may be the centre of all eyes, and thus gain a feeling of outward superiority."
This sent Mac off into a roar of laughter.
"You"re daft, man!" he roared.
After a minute or two he said; "But what has all this to do with Tom Murray?"
"A lot," I said seriously. "You think you whack Tom because you must have discipline, but you whack him for a different reason. In your deep unconscious mind you are an infant. You want to show your self-a.s.sertion just as a kid does. You leather Tom because you"ve never outgrown your seven-year-old stage. On market-day, when Tom walks behind a drove and whacks the stots over the hips with a stick, he is doing exactly what you did this afternoon. You are both infants."
I have had to give up lecturing Mac, for he always takes me as a huge joke. He is a good fellow, but he has the wonderful gift of being blind to anything that might make him reconsider his values. Many people protect themselves in the same way--by laughing. I have more than once seen an alcoholic laugh heartily at his wrecked home and lost job.
II.
What an amount of excellent material Mac and his kind are spoiling.
Tom Murray is a fine lad, full of energy and initiative, but he has to sit pa.s.sive at a desk doing work that does not interest him. His creative faculties have no outlet at all during the day, and naturally when free from authority at nights he expresses his creative interest anti-socially. He nearly wrecked the five-twenty the other night; he tied a huge iron bolt to the rails. Mac called it devilment, but it was merely curiosity. He had had innumerable pins and farthings flattened on the line, and he wanted to see what the engine really could do.
There is devilment in some of Tom"s activities, for example in his deliberate destruction of Dauvit"s apple tree. Mac and the law would give him the birch for that, but fortunately Mac and the law don"t know who did it. Tom"s destructiveness is only the direct result of Mac"s authority. Suppression always has the same result; it turns a young G.o.d into a young devil. Had I Tom in a free school all his activities would be social and good.
And yet nearly every teacher believes in Mac"s way. They suppress all the time, and what is worst of all they firmly believe they are doing the best thing.
"Look at Glasgow!" cried Mac the other night when I was talking about the crime of authority. "Look at Glasgow! What happened there during the war? Juvenile crime increased. And why? Because the fathers were in the army and the boys had no control over them; they broke loose.
That proves that your theories are potty."
I believe that juvenile crime did increase during the war, and I believe that Mac"s explanation of the phenomenon is correct. The absence of the father gave the boy liberty to be a hooligan. But no boy wants to be a hooligan unless he has a strong rebellion against authority. No boy is destructive if he is free to be constructive. I think that the difference between Mac and myself is this: he believes in original sin, while I believe in original virtue.
I wonder why it is so difficult to convert the authority people to the new way of thinking. There must be a deep reason why they want to cling to their authority. Authority gives much power, and love of power may be at the root of the desire to retain authority. Yet I fancy that it is deeper than that. In Mac, for instance, I think that his quickness in becoming angry at Tom"s insubordination is due to the insubordination within himself. Like most of us Mac has a father complex, and he fears and hates any authority exercised over himself.
So in squashing Tom"s rebellion he is unconsciously squashing the rebellion in his own soul. Tom"s rebellion could not affect me because I have got rid of my father complex, and his rebellion would touch nothing in me.
Authority will be long in dying, for too many people cling to it as a prop. Most people like to have their minds made up for them; it is so easy to obey orders, and so difficult to live your own life carrying your own burden and finding your own path. To live your own life . . .
that is the ideal. To discover yourself bravely, to realise yourself fully, to follow truth even if the crowd stone you. That is living . . . but it is dangerous living, for that way lies crucifixion.
No one in authority has ever been crucified; every martyr dies because he challenges authority. . . Christ, Thomas More, Jim Connolly.
Duncan and McTaggart the minister were in to-night, and we got on to the subject of wit and humour. Having a psycho-a.n.a.lysis complex I mentioned the theory that we laugh so as to give release to our repressions. The others shook their heads, and I decided to test my theory on them. I told them the story of the golfer who was driving off about a foot in front of the teeing marks. The club secretary happened to come along.
"Here, my man!" cried the indignant secretary, "you"re disqualified!"
"What for?" demanded the player.
"You"re driving off in front of the teeing mark."
The player looked at him pityingly.
"Away, you bletherin" idiot!" he said tensely, "I"m playing my third!"
"Now," I said to the others, "I"m going to tell you one by one what your golf is like. You, McTaggart, are a scratch man or a plus man.
Is that so?"
"Plus one," he said in surprise. "How did you guess?"
"I didn"t guess," I said with great superiority. "I found out by pure science. You didn"t laugh at my joke; you merely smiled. That shows that bad golf doesn"t touch any complex inside you. The man who takes three strokes to make one foot of ground means nothing to you because, as I say, there"s nothing in yourself it touches."
"Wonderful!" cried the minister.
"It"s quite simple," I crowed, "and now for Mac! You, Mac, are a rotten player; you take sixteen to a hole."
"Only ten," protested Mac hastily. "How the devil did you know? I"ve never played with you."
"Deduction, my boy. You roared at my joke, because it touched your bad golf complex. In fact you were really laughing at yourself and your own awful golf."
"What about me?" put in Duncan.
Now there was something in Duncan"s eye that should have warned me of danger, but I was so proud of my success that I plunged confidently.
"Oh, you don"t play golf," I said airily.
"Wrong!" he cried, "I do! And I"m worse than Mac too!"
I was astounded.
"Impossible!" I cried. "You never laughed at my story at all; that is it touched nothing whatsoever inside you."
Duncan shook his head.
"You"re completely wrong this time."
"Well, why _didn"t_ you laugh?" I asked.
He grinned.
"I dunno. Possibly it is because I first heard that joke in my cradle."